Editorial: Emergency will make local training better

Posted:
09/14/2013 12:30:37 AM MDT

When emergency managers plan for natural disasters, they look at the past to get a gauge for what they should prepare for in the future.

In Northern Colorado, one of those natural disasters is flash flooding. The 1976 Big Thompson Canyon flood looms large in the collective memories of those who lived through it, but there have been others. The Spring Creek flood in Fort Collins taught valuable lessons about communications compatibility among emergency agencies, and smaller-scale floods in Left Hand Canyon and others have taught the lessons of how quickly circumstances can change.

Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith noted in an interview early Friday that a disaster training exercise several years ago talked about the prospect of a community split in half by torrential floodwaters. That training has served residents of Northern Colorado well, as the number of deaths and injuries has been remarkably low for an event of this magnitude.

However, it's doubtful that the exercise considered splitting several communities -- Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins -- at the same time. Also, the social media world was far, far different even three years ago. Rumors about road openings and closures, or water quality issues, travel farther and faster than ever before.

As the region's emergency managers start to transition from frantic response to measured recovery, they will have plenty of information at their disposal for their next large-scale training. Soon enough, they will be able to turn land back over to its owners and be able to meet in a regional capacity and discuss what worked and what didn't.

That should be a great benefit for emergency managers in the future -- because there will be more emergencies, perhaps even on this large scale.